It’s a piece of cake. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. Why add fuel to the fire? Idioms are those phrases that mean more than the sum of their words. As our Open Translation Project volunteers translate TED Talks into 105 languages, they’re often challenged to translate English idioms into their language. Which made us wonder: what are their favorite idioms in their own tongue?

Below, we asked translators to share their favorite idioms and how they would translate literally. The results are laugh-out-loud funny.

The idiom: Tomaten auf den Augen haben.Literal translation: “You have tomatoes on your eyes.”What it means: “You are not seeing what everyone else can see. It refers to real objects, though — not abstract meanings.”

The idiom: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof.Literal translation: “I only understand the train station.”What it means: “I don’t understand a thing about what that person is saying.’”

The idiom: Die Katze im Sack kaufen.Literal translation: “To buy a cat in a sack.”What it means: That a buyer purchased something without inspecting it first.Other languages this idiom exists in: We hear from translators that this is an idiom in Swedish, Polish, Latvian and Norwegian. In English, the phrase is “buying a pig in poke,” but English speakers do also “let the cat out of the bag,” which means to reveal something that’s supposed to be secret.

The idiom: Det är ingen ko på isenLiteral translation: “There’s no cow on the ice.”What it means: “There’s no need to worry. We also use ‘Det är ingen fara på taket,’ or ‘There’s no danger on the roof,’ to mean the same thing.”

The idiom: Att glida in på en räkmackaLiteral translation: “To slide in on a shrimp sandwich.”What it means: “It refers to somebody who didn’t have to work to get where they are.”

The idiom: Det föll mellan stolarnaLiteral translation: “It fell between chairs.”What it means: “It’s an excuse you use when two people were supposed to do it, but nobody did. It has evolved into the slightly ironic phrase, ‘It fell between the chair,’ which you use when you want to say,‘Yeah, I know I was supposed to do it but I forgot.’”

The idiom: เอาหูไปนา เอาตาไปไร่Literal translation: “Take ears to the field, take eyes to the farm.”What it means: “It means ‘don’t pay any attention.’ Almost like ‘don’t bring your eyes and ears with you.’ If that were possible.”

The idiom: ไก่เห็นตีนงู งูเห็นนมไก่Literal translation: “The hen sees the snake’s feet and the snake sees the hen’s boobs.”What it means: “It means two people know each other’s secrets.”

The idiom: ชาติหน้าตอนบ่าย ๆLiteral translation: “One afternoon in your next reincarnation.”What it means: “It’s never gonna happen.”Other languages this idiom exists in: A phrase that means a similar thing in English: “When pigs fly.” In French, the same idea is conveyed by the phrase, “when hens have teeth (quand les poules auront des dents).” In Russian, it’s the intriguing phrase, “When a lobster whistles on top of a mountain (Когда рак на горе свистнет).” And in Dutch, it’s “When the cows are dancing on the ice (Als de koeien op het ijs dansen).”

The idiom: Pūst pīlītes.Literal translation: “To blow little ducks.”What it means: “It means to talk nonsense or to lie.”Other language connections: In Croatian, when someone is obviously lying to someone, you say that they are “throwing cream into their eyes (bacati kajmak u oči).”

The idiom: Хоть кол на голове тешиLiteral translation: “You can sharpen with an ax on top of this head.”What it means: “He’s a very stubborn person.”

The idiom: брать/взять себя в рукиLiteral translation: “To take oneself in one’s hands.”What it means: “It means ‘to pull yourself together.’”Other languages this idiom exists in: Translators tell us that there is a German version of this idiom too: “Sich zusammenreißen,” which translates literally as “to tear oneself together.” And in Polish, the same idea is expressed by the phrase, “we take ourselves into our fist (wziąć się w garść).”

The idiom: Quem não tem cão caça com gatoLiteral translation: “He who doesn’t have a dog hunts with a cat.”What it means: “You make the most of what you’ve got.” Basically, you do what you need to do, with what the resources you have.

The idiom: Słoń nastąpił ci na ucho?Literal translation: “Did an elephant stomp on your ear?”What it means: “You have no ear for music.”Other languages this idiom exists in: Our translators tell us that in Croatian, there’s also a connection made between elephants and musical ability in the phrase, “You sing like an elephant farted in your ear (Pjevaš kao da ti je slon prdnuo u uho.).” But in the Latvian version, it’s a bear who stomps on your ear.

The idiom: Iets voor een appel en een ei kopenLiteral translation: “Buying something for an apple and an egg.”What it means: “It means you bought it very cheaply.”Other language connections: Spanish translator Camille Martínez points out out that when something is expensive in English, you pay two body parts for it (“it cost me an arm and a leg”), whereas in Spanish you only pay one — either a kidney (“me costó un riñón”) or an eye (“me costó un ojo de la cara”).

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It translates into Latvian almost literally and, of course, idiomatically. You can say “Atpisies!” (do not say that), which is literally also “fuck off (from here)” (“pist” being an old verb for having sex, “at-” a prefix meaning “off”, and “-ies” a reflexive ending), but you can also say (do not), in an even lower register, “Pisies dirst!”, which literally means “fuck off to have a shit”. The picture is different, but we are talking about translating the hard to translate thing.

Don’t know if there are any Tagalog speakers here, or Indonesian ones for that matter too, but something I’ve been curious about for a long time. The two countires are adjacent each other and share many linguistic characteristics. In Tagalog, I’ve heard (and I don’t know the proper spelling or diacritic marks, but ) “mahal kita” is translated into English as “I love you.”
In Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia/Maylasia) it could easily be understood as “we are expensive” mahal = expensive, kita = “we” as in “we two.” IOWs an exclusive “we”

Being an immigrant society Israel must have imported many idioms into Hebrew; of the above, we have:
“To buy a cat in a sack.” לקנות חתול בשק
“It fell between chairs.” נופל בין הכסאות
“The thief has a burning hat.” על ראש הגנב בוער הכובע

Given that English gets some 70 some odd percent of our vocabulary from places other than its Germanic origins, I think that’s as close to an original English word for the concept as we’re going to get!

tanhuichucommented on Feb 13 2015

幸灾乐祸 in Chinese. Meaning (pretty much literal) “delight in disaster and enjoy misfortune (someone else’s of course)”.
It’s more straightforward than some other Chinese phrases which might require a short story to fully explain.

mrheadshotcommented on Apr 17 2015

Well actually one single word in English/German is a perfect match.
It’s schadenfreude.

Finnish “Vahingonilo (on) paras ilo” means same.
Grammatically it should have that “on” (english: is) but such idioms and sayings get commonly shortened.
Literally meaning “The joy derived from the misfortune of others is the best joy.”

Marie Lecoqcommented on Jan 21 2015

Love this article!

I can think of two similar idioms in French to say something is expensive :

Berthecommented on Feb 5 2015

In Dutch, when something is very expensive, you can say: “Het kost me een rib uit mijn lijf”, literally meaning “it costs me a rib from my body”. It is a reference to the story in the Bible of how God created Eve from Adam’s rib.

sunnydayz6146commented on Jan 21 2015

Gabriel Ishidacommented on Jan 21 2015

Actually, the Portuguese idiom “Quem tem cão, caça com gato” is “Quem tem cão, caça como gato”, which means ““He who doesn’t have a dog hunts like a cat”. But the meaning explained in the text is the same.

This is very close to “cut (his/her/your) nose off to spite (his/her/your) own face”, which means to commit an act that brings harm or misfortune to oneself simply to hurt another. Often, but not always, means the person committing the act knows that it will bring personal misfortune, but is willing to bear the cost for the satisfaction of the impact on someone else..